Some food for busy thought ~ May 10, 1990

David Heiller

Monday evening at 6 p.m.: I had just finished taking my first break between a busy day and an even crazier night, and some summer sausage and a cold rainbow trout have saved my sanity.
It had been a hectic day. Piles of ads to write, people to call, stories to edit. I wasn’t half done, and started steeling myself for an All-Nighter on Tuesday.

If there’s one thing I hate, it’s working all night. It used to be an adventure, like during the Askov fire. Hot news. Murders. Sex. (My imagination works overtime too during an All-Nighter.) But not anymore. There’s about as much adventure in your normal Askov American as there is at a canasta party.

I knew it would be this way. I had taken a three-day weekend to Brownsville to visit my mother. And now I was paying for it.

David's mother, Fern, and David

Once during the day I even told Cindy that we shouldn’t have gone to Brownsville. “But we went to see your mother, David,” she answered, and I felt like a heel, and the shoe fit.

But I found a cure Monday evening when I sat down with my summer sausage and rainbow trout.

Mom had sent it back with me. She had fried the rainbow on Friday night, fried it brown and buttery and too hot to touch like only mothers can. We ate until we were full. The kids each had a piece without a complaint.

But one last slab remained. It went into the fridge. Then Mom slipped it into a plastic bag for our trip home. I discovered it as we rushed off to work Monday morning.

“Grandma said we should give it to Miss Emma,” Noah said. I held up the fish with a cat-like smile of my own. Miss Emma? THE CAT?!? Mom has a subtle sense of humor. She knew that fish had as much chance of going to the cat as Joe Schmuckhead has of winning the lottery.

So I took a break Monday evening, sat down with the sports page and got my fingers greasy and ate that cold rainbow trout. And for a second I forgot about the pile of work. I thought instead about sitting around the supper table. Mollie singing the Johnny Appleseed grace. Mom pouring us each a cup of tea. Letting the kids be excused, and just sitting there, talking, not watching the clock or thinking about kids’ bedtime or work. Is there anything finer than sitting at the table after supper with your mother?

The summer sausage helped, too. We had driven to New Albin, Iowa, on Saturday evening to buy it, Mom and I in the front seat, Cindy and the kids in back. (Is there anything finer than taking a drive on a spring evening with your mother?)

This summer sausage is homemade, and tastes like it. Just strong enough to let people know you ate homemade summer sausage, without melting their contact lenses. Just dry enough to eat with your fingers, without bread—not too greasy, just enough to stain a brown paper bag.

For a second it tasted like a setting sun over the Mississippi. Or the eagles we counted along the way to New Albin—twice we even stopped and looked at them through binoculars, soaring right at us, sitting on a branch along the back-water. Or the strawberry pop from Spring Grove, the best pop in the world, especially when mixed with eagles and a setting sun and your family and your mother.

You could add some seasoning too. A game of softball with Noah at the school-grounds. Smiling as he laughs and runs on base paths that haven’t changed in 30 years. Pushing Mollie on the huge swings. The wooden seats have been replaced with vinyl, otherwise they are the same too.

Or fishing south of town. Scaring a muskrat off the rocks, watching him swim silently, then slip out of sight. Seeing a great blue heron jack-knife into the sky. Losing four lures on the end-less hidden snags, and not caring. Catching only three tiny pan-fish and not caring.

Yup, that piece of summer sausage and cold rainbow trout made me think twice about my busy day and my upcoming All-Nighter. They made me shake my head when thinking how I regretted going to visit Mom.

They saved my sanity. And my stomach felt pretty good, too.

When warnings will suffice ~ April 12, 2006

David Heiller

The flashers on the front of a deputy’s car made my stomach sink.

I was zipping to work, my mind already plotting out the day, when I met the Houston County squad car on the curve below the Robert Snodgrass home on County Road 3.

A hilly road, some curves, and a 
lovely day. A perfect day to speed,
or get caught at it...
But for many, including David,
a warning does suffice.

A quick glance at my speedometer confirmed my midsection’s queasiness.

Let’s just say I wasn’t going 55,

“Please please please,” I said to myself as I slowed down and kept going. I scanned my rear view mirror for the next mile into town, expecting to see bright lights blinking in my rear view mirror, but that didn’t happen. The deputy had made his point with the electronic fireworks display from the front of his car. I had slowed down. I had been warned, and I really appreciated that that was all I received.

It came in handy the next morning too. There I was, at the open stretch of highway by David Jennings’ home. Of course I was in a hurry again. Aren’t we all. It was tempting.

But I didn’t speed. And I had a sneaking suspicion...

Sure enough, a couple miles further, a squad car faced me. It was close to a spot where it often sits, only this time it was on the other side of the road, in the ditch. All I could see was the top two feet of the car. I’ve seen turkey hunters that didn’t blend into the landscape as well as that deputy. He should have received the Best Stake Out Speed Trap Award from the Minnesta Association of County Deputies.

This little incident pointed out a lesson to me: sometimes a warning is all a person needs to correct their behavior.

I’m not saying punishment is a bad thing. But I’ve been in more than a few incidents where I learned my lesson with a warning or a rebuke.

David and his mother.

There was that time my brother and I got caught smoking cigarettes. Rita Grams actually figured it out, after first getting a confession from her son, Randy, who sang like a canary. That led to our clubhouse gang in the sumac trees above the root beer stand.

My sister Kathy just happened to be car-hopping at the root beer stand that afternoon. She watched us walk dejectedly down the hill, and she listened to our pleas for amnesty with a glint in her eyes. “No way,” she said.

We knew when her shift ended at 7 p.m. that she would tell Mom. The intervening three hours were the longest of my life. Of course we couldn’t confess. We moped around the yard like dead men walking.

Noah got a warning, and a note ribbing him about it from his father.

Sure enough, shortly after Kathy arrived home, Mom summoned us into the house. I can’t remember her exact words. Something like, “Why did you smoke. It’s bad for you. You should be ashamed of yourselves. Don’t do that again.” Good mother lines, classics.

And that was it. No punishment beyond the Longest Day that we had just experienced. Perhaps she saw that in our eyes and knew it: a warning was enough.

And then there was the time—oh enough! You get the point.

Sometimes penalties are good,

And punishment is nice.

But don’t forget there are those days

When warnings will suffice.

Generation gap imaginings ~ May 10, 1984

David Heiller

WHEN I WAS IN HIGH SCHOOL, we used to talk about the “generation gap” a lot. The generation gap was some sort of chasm that separated kids from adults, ranging from different values to different styles of clothing.

Noah opens the cabinet door
 to begin his selections for the 
mornings' radio station.

If your father didn’t like the length of your hair and told you so, this was the generation gap. If you believed in free speech to the point of certain four letter words, and your mother disagreed with a bar of soap in hand, you were victims of the generation gap. If you protested the war in Vietnam and your neighbor fought there, the generation gap was taking its toll.

I never put much stock in the so-called generation gap. I always thought it was just a phrase, an easy way to express something that is very complex. It was a cliché, because it was used too much.

But now the generation gap is back on my mind, in the form of my 11-month-old son. It started last Saturday morning. I was in the kitchen, washing dishes. Noah was in the living room, playing. I could hear him there, babbling, humming, and making baby noises. The radio was tuned to KAXE, a public radio station in Grand Rapids, playing children’s music.

I heard Noah crawl across the floor, his knees going bump, bump, bump, in rhythm of his excited breathing hmm, hmm, hmm. This means he has found something exciting. I heard him open the cabinet doors to the stereo. This is forbidden territory—that’s exciting enough. I was up to my elbows in soap suds, so I listened, as Noah’s hand found the tuning knob on the stereo receiver.

The generation gap begins here.

He turned the station from the kids’ music down to some classical selection on Minnesota Public Radio. It was nice violin music. Noah hesitated for a few seconds, then went back up the dial, past KAXE, till the music of Willie Nelson and Julio Iglesias came forth, loud and clear. I heard Noah plop down, and go bump, bump, bump back to his playing. He was content with “For All the Girls I’ve Loved Before” on some soft rock Duluth radio station.

I know, Noah is only 11 months old. It was just an accident that he chose Willie and Julio over Mahler and Burl Ives. This generation gap nonsense is just a part of a young father’s fear, imaginings of a spirit that isn’t even there.

Isn’t it?